Rowan Eng-Kryston
As I wandered Larnaca I found a great deal of graffiti, and as I started becoming familiar with the city, I started to notice patterns emerging. Houses are left alone, highly trafficked downtown areas have more tags than residential areas, and abandoned buildings are free reign for any and all graffiti. The style, frequency, and type of graffiti are all influenced by the area of the city they are painted in—for example, there is an area with many galleries and workshops where there are many large and elaborate murals. But there were two specific tags that I saw over and over again throughout Larnaca, and even in other cities like Nicosia and Paphos. The consistency and seeming animosity between the taggers intrigued me. 13s and 7s were spray painted on the walls of buildings, electrical boxes, lamp posts, dumpsters, fences, on the shutters of abandoned houses, and any other unsupervised surface–and what’s more, they overlapped each other, 7s were covered up with 13s and vice versa. The 13 tag was also written as θ.13 and would sometimes have ΠΑΟ written next to it, and the 7 tag was occasionally written as θ7. These tags occurred so frequently that I started making up bits to explain who was leaving them. I wondered if these taggers were members of two rival gangs, and if their tags were a way of marking territories. I started playfully referring to them as the 13 thieves and the 7 serpents. They really seemed to hate each other, and it seemed to me as if the 13 thieves were the main aggressors as they were usually the ones to cover up the tags made by the 7 serpents.
As my time in Larnaca continued, the lore started to become more and more elaborate until my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to research the true origins of this incredibly intriguing graffiti. But after going down a long research rabbit hole, I made the unfortunate realization that I was more entertained by my own stories than the truth.
So let me spoil it for you too—the tags that plague Larnaca, and Cyprus at large, are about…sports. Both tags are associated with soccer teams, or football clubs if you want to get European with it. The 7 tag refers to Gate 7 (aka Θύρα 7), which is the name of the supporters’ group for Olympiacos CFP. There is no exact date for when Gate 7 was founded. The group is named after the 7th gate of Karaiskakis Stadium, in Piraeus, where the football fans would gather to watch Olympiacos games together. The team colors are red and white, which explains why Gate 7 tags usually come in these colors. The 13 tag refers to Gate 13 (aka Θύρα 13), which is the name of the supporters’ group for Panathinaikos A.O. Gate 13 is the oldest supporters’ union in Greece and it was officially founded on November 19, 1966. The group is named after the 13th gate of the Leoforos Alexandras Stadium, in Athens, where fans would religiously meet to support their team during home games. Graffiti is meant to show the group’s devotion to the Panathinaikos A.O football club, so Gate 13 tags are often green and white (the team colors), and accompanied with the following: a three leaf clover (the team logo), a θ (standing for Θύρα), and/or ΠΑΟ (the abbreviated name of the team). The way these tags fight for territory throughout the city showcases the rivalry between these two groups of football fans, and how each is desperate to eradicate evidence of the other in order to more prominently showcase their loyalty.
